What the Iran bombing shows about American power and its limits
Last week was a good week for American power and for Donald Trump. The attack he ordered on Iran, against most expectations, was a successful demonstration of that power especially as it intimidated Iran sufficiently to discourage immediate retaliation.
The agreement by NATO to set a 5% target for defense spending in proportion to GDP counts as another political success for Trump, especially as NATO's Secretary-General, Mark Rutte, gave that success a ridiculous embellishment by describing him as 'Daddy. Celebratory hamburgers and Cokes would have been called for over the weekend at Mar-a-Lago.
The success of Trump's bombing of Iran is not measured in terms of whether US 'bunker-busting' bombs have destroyed Iran's nuclear-weapons program. Trump says that they have, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khameini says they haven't – and we can be sure that both are lying.
Almost certainly, based on satellite photos and reports from US and Israeli intelligence, the three big nuclear facilities the bombs struck have been crippled in the sense that it will take time and a great deal of money to rebuild and reopen them.
Yet Israeli intelligence also believes that Iran still possesses an unknown quantity of enriched uranium and an unknown number of secret facilities. Whatever Trump and the US Department of Defense may say, the Israelis know that if Iran wished to resume its nuclear program, it could do so, albeit at great expense. The real question is not whether the nuclear program has been destroyed.
The real questions concern whether Iran's political will to develop nuclear weapons has been destroyed by America's willingness to fight alongside Israel; and whether Israel's own political leadership is now prepared to wait and try to gauge Iranian intentions or whether instead it might seek to renew its own attacks in response to any indication, however minor, that the nuclear or missile programmes are being resumed.
Certainly, Trump now has leverage over Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, since the American bombing did Netanyahu a big favor. However, the leverage works both ways: By persuading Trump that the bombing was worth the risk Netanyahu gave Trump a big political win, and in the aftermath of the (so far) 12-day war it is Israeli intelligence which will play a crucial role in reporting on Iran's behavior and intentions.
So, for the time being, Trump and Netanyahu are in a relationship of mutual dependency. Trump might hope to be able to press Netanyahu to bring an end to his attacks on Gaza and to find a way to bring Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Gulf Arab countries together again to find a long-term solution to that conflict. But if Netanyahu decides that a ceasefire in Gaza is not in his interests, he has tools in his hands with which he can resist American pressure.
It is an old story: US military power is extraordinary, but America's ability to shape sustainable diplomatic and political outcomes in the aftermath even of successful military action has been shown many times to be limited. If this brief but effective bombing of Iran were to bring a sustainable and positive political outcome, it would be an extraordinary exception to the long-term rule.
Much depends on what now happens inside Iran. The killings by Israel of a large swath of Iran's military and scientific leadership means that a new generation has suddenly been promoted. Wartime conditions have led to a tightening of control over the country by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the most ideological part of the armed forces. Executions of suspected Israeli spies are under way.
The 86-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei remains in theoretical charge, but in reality a new generation of militants is now in day-to-day control. They will certainly have been intimidated by the American attack and will not feel strong enough to wish to provoke further attacks. Some form of negotiation will likely get going with the Americans about the nuclear program, though it is also possible that the new militant leaders may simply try to keep their heads low for a while, to give them time to consolidate their power.
One big thing that has happened as a result of Trump's bombing decision is that the idea that the US president is averse to risk and simply likes doing deals has been shown to be incomplete. He does like deals and doesn't like risk, but plainly is willing to use military action when he sees an opportunity or a necessity. It is unlikely that China ever felt confident that Trump would not intervene if they were to attempt to invade or blockade Taiwan, but certainly they now know to take the threat of US military intervention during the Trump presidency seriously.
An optimistic view would be that Trump's success in Iran might now encourage him to make a bold intervention on the side of Ukraine and against Vladimir Putin's Russia. This is evidently what European members of NATO are hoping for, and it is what Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was pushing for when he spoke with Trump at the NATO summit on June 25, and again asked to be allowed to buy more US missile defense systems and other weapons.
Yet just as American power to shape political outcomes has been shown in the long term to be limited, during the seven months so far of Trump's presidency we have seen that his attention span and commitment to specific causes are also limited. However often Europeans debase themselves by calling him 'Daddy,' it will not change the reality that European countries cannot rely on America and that they need to protect themselves.
The importance of NATO's new 5% spending target is not the target itself, which is largely meaningless: Even America currently spends only 3.5% of GDP and is unlikely to achieve 5% given the size of its fiscal deficit and public debt. The importance lies in the fact that a wide range of European governments, led by Germany, France and the UK, have committed themselves to build their defenses up to a level at which they no longer need to depend on America.
Under Trump, America will often be hostile, especially over trade, and so will need to be resisted by a confident and resolute Europe. However much success American power might have found last week, the US cannot be relied upon – and its long-term influence is, anyway, limited. Europe is not on its own, but it needs to be self-reliant.
Formerly editor-in-chief of The Economist, Bill Emmott is currently chairman of the Japan Society of the UK, the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the International Trade Institute.
A version of this article has been published in Italian by La Stampa and can be found in English on the substack Bill Emmott's Global View. It is republished here with kind permission.
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